Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind (P.S.) [Paperback]

Loung Ung (Author)

Book Description

Series: P.S. | Publication Date: April 11, 2006

After enduring years of hunger, deprivation, and devastating loss at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, ten-year-old Loung Ung became the "lucky child," the sibling chosen to accompany her eldest brother to America while her one surviving sister and two brothers remained behind. In this poignant and elegiac memoir, Loung recalls her assimilation into an unfamiliar new culture while struggling to overcome dogged memories of violence and the deep scars of war. In alternating chapters, she gives voice to Chou, the beloved older sister whose life in war-torn Cambodia so easily could have been hers. Highlighting the harsh realities of chance and circumstance in times of war as well as in times of peace, Lucky Child is ultimately a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and to the salvaging strength of family bonds.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In her second memoir, Ung picks up where her first, the National Book Award–winning First They Killed My Father, left off, with the author escaping a devastated Cambodia in 1980 at age 10 and flying to her new home in Vermont. Though she embraces her American life—which carries advantages ranging from having a closet of her own to getting a formal education and enjoying The Brady Bunch—she can never truly leave her Cambodian life behind. She and her eldest brother, with whom she escaped, left behind their three other siblings. This book is alternately heart-wrenching and heartwarming, as it follows the parallel lives of Loung Ung and her closest sister, Chou, during the 15 years it took for them to reunite. Loung effectively juxtaposes chapters about herself and her sister to show their different worlds: while the author's meals in America are initially paid for with food stamps, Chou worries about whether she'll be able to scrounge enough rice; Loung is haunted by flashbacks, but Chou is still dodging the Khmer Rouge; and while Loung's biggest concern is fitting in at school, Chou struggles daily to stay alive. Loung's first-person chapters are the strongest, replete with detailed memories as a child who knows she is the lucky one and can't shake the guilt or horror. "For no matter how seemingly great my life is in America... it will not be fulfilling if I live it alone.... [L]iving life to the fullest involves living it with your family."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Ung's autobiographical First They Killed My Father, 2000) chronicled her harrowing childhood under Pol Pot's genocidal regime, which claimed the lives of her mother, father, and two sisters. In an essential companion timed for release on the thirtieth anniversary of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge takeover, Ung unflinchingly continues her memoir with her arrival in Vermont alongside her sister-in-law and brother, who, able to "borrow enough gold to take only one of his siblings with him," chose his tough youngest sister as the "lucky child." Ung agonized over everyone she left behind, but especially regretted her 15-year separation from her last surviving sister, Chou. Here she tells their parallel life stories, effectively interleaving her own narrative of an '80s, valley-girl adolescence (laced with posttraumatic episodes) with chapters about Chou's growth to adulthood amid threats of land mines and Khmer Rouge raids. By daringly (and remarkably successfully) assuming her sister's point of view, Ung brings third- and first-world disparities into discomfiting focus and gracefully dramatizes the metaphorical joining together of her haunted past with her current identity as a privileged Cambodian American. When the narratives fuse at the sisters' long-awaited reunion, their clasping of hands throws wide the floodgates to tamped-down memories--a cathartic release that readers will tearfully, gratefully share. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (April 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060733950
• ISBN-13: 978-0060733957
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > History > Asia > Cambodia
  • #20 in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Family Relationships > Siblings
  • #50 in Books > History > Asia > Southeast Asia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging and gripping tale of immigrant experience, May 19, 2005

By 

G. Griffith (washington, dc) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind (Hardcover)

Ms. Ung has once again given us a powerful rendering of what it means to survive. Her first book, First They Killed My Father" was extraordinary for its ability to translate the experience of the Cambodian genocide for a public disconnected to the realities of that war.

Her second book is no less a tour de force, giving us an eye into the life of a young girl from a radically different culture (and history of deprevation) trying to come to terms with this American life. She does it remarkably well, with candor and grace.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not So Perfect : Loung Ung and Us, August 15, 2005

By 

S. Ahlberg (Gettysburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind (Hardcover)

As I read 'Lucky Girl,' I was amazed that Loung Ung had the courage to write such an honest account of her feelings and experiences following her arrival in the USA. She paints a portrait of herself with shadings of the human faults and frailties that we all carry within us. But would we have the courage to pen the less admirable aspects of ourselves for all the world to know?
Several years ago I traveled to Phnom Penh. Reading Ms Ung's first book after the visit, I was haunted with vivid pictures of the Ung's family living such a comfortable life in the city and then being plunged into the darkness of genocide. I recalled thinking that the streets I wandered, the movie theater, the markets were places that, in my mind, had strangely witnessed the Ung's family pleasures and then the insanity of the Khmer brutality.
In 'Lucky Child' Loung Ung reminds us that although we might consider this unspeakable chapter of human history as 'over,' her family and thousands of other rural Cambodians live with the fear of landmines and the reality of vestiges of the Khmer threat every day.
Should you want to learn about these courageous people in the context of someone to be admired for amazing candor, read 'Lucky Child.'

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maybe to soon for me to review, June 8, 2005

By 

Brandon (Santa Cruz, US, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind (Hardcover)

I just finished "First They Killed My Father" the day before, and walked down to the bookstore and scoured around the shelves to pick this book up. Then read it all in one sitting through the night. If you've read her first book, you really should read this, so you can see how things work out for the Ung family. Although, a great read on its own, I think it best if people read both books and in chronological order.

Not sure what about this particular story of this one girl and her family managed to pull my heart out of my chest over and over. I found myself in tears almost every page. The thoughts that there are millions of stories like this one that came out of Cambodia, gives to ideas that the whole world should be getting together to grieve over this tragedy and helping socially to heal the wounds caused to Cambodia by this war.